WWF Road to Wrestlemania is the second wrestling game for the
Game Boy Advance in North America. The other wrestling game is
Fire Pro Wrestling, which got many rave reviews. This game is
developed by Natsume, the same people who developed the GB Color
version of Wrestlemania 2000. So did Natsume take advantage of
the GBA's upgrades in their first wrestling game outing on this
platform? Let's get onto the review and find out.

Graphics

Usually the graphics for most wrestling games on portable
systems is not the greatest, and you think with the theory of
working on a more powerful platform that things should get
better, right? Well, unfortunately, that is not the case here.
All the wrestlers have the same height and body shape appearence
in the heat of action. And as for the designs of the wrestlers,
only about half of them barely resemble their real life
counterparts. Like The Undertaker is just one Black blob. The
wrestling arena and crowd are well done though, and are probably
the highlight of the graphics department. The simple moves you
see performed in this game like a body slam or suplex, only have
a few simple frames of animation and barely resemble what they
look like on television. The game does add some neat things like
a pretty real looking digitized photo of all 24 wrestlers in the
game. Plus mini Titan Tron videos that play before the wrestlers
walk out like they do in No Mercy for N64.

Sound

Usual scenario is most portable games have horrible music, and
even though things are starting to improve with the technology of
the Game Boy Advance, things are just way too bad in WWF Road to
Wrestlemania to justify that statement. For background music all
we have is just one crappy rock tune during matches that we get
to here again and again. All the punches, holds, and slams are
represented with simple beeps. We do get a little bit of speech
from the referee though as he counts pins and calls submissions.
On the up side, for the first time in a WWF portable game since
WWF RAW in 1994 we get to hear the actual theme music. And most
of them sound pretty darn good too.

Game play

The controls for this game leave something to be desired. For
the main grappling system they take a page out of Fire Pro
Wrestling's book where you have to take a pause after initiating
a grapple to enter the button combination to do a move. That may
sound all fine and dandy, but too bad your move list is limited
to about four moves. And all your moves are for the most part are
a body slam, a suplex, and and a simple eye rake. You still have
all your standard turnbuckle and running moves, and you can
perform the wrestlers signature moves in here by pressing A and B
at the same time when two of the three bars on your adrenaline
meter fill up. Yes, that horrible life meter from the GBC version
of Wrestlemania 2000 is back and it makes playing the game
horrible.

The game does have a good amount of modes of play. We have
your basic exhibition match ups which consist of your simple
bouts of single, tag team, handicap, and triple threat matches.
Then we move onto the gimmick matches where we have the standard
Cage Match, and for the first time on portable wrestling games,
the Royal Rumble where all 24 wrestlers in the game need to be
tossed out of the ring to decide a winner. The King of the Ring
tournament is also here as well where up to eight wrestlers can
compete in an elimination style tournament. Gauntlet mode is here
where you can see how many superstars you can defeat straight
with just one life.

The game's main story mode is the Road to Wrestlemania, which
plays exactly like the same named mode in the N64 version of
Wrestlemania 2000 where you go through 52 weeks of a full
calendar year of matches and Pay-Per-View's, complete with
storylines, as you work your way up to the main PPV,
Wrestlemania. The game only has one creation mode, and that is
create-a-ppv where you can creat your own card and add as many
matches as you want. Too bad there isn't a create a wrestler,
because the game really could of used one considering it only has
a roster of 24 guys. Yes, this is only a portable game, but on a
brand new platform, so expectations are higher. Also worth
mentioning is that Fire Pro Wrestling even has a edit wrestler
option, even though it has a near 200-man roster.

Replay Value

The game is GBA Link Cable compatible where up to four players
can play to heat up the action. And yes, multi player is usually
where most the fun is in portable wrestling games. The main Road
to Wrestlemania mode is pretty fun to play through and will take
a long time to beat for the solo gamer playing through it. The
Gauntlet and PPV modes will also add some replay, but I'm not too
sure what most gamers will think after they find out there is
only 24 wrestlers with no create-a-wrestler mode. Even though
this is the highest amount of wrestlers in a WWF Licensed game on
a portable system (the old record use to be 20 in the GB Color
version of WWF Attitude).

In Brief

+: Lots of game modes to play in, Actual Entrances complete
with official theme music, Up to four players can compete

I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed with this
wrestling game. Funny to see how Natsume actually took a step
back from its last wrestling portable wrestling game,
Wrestlemania 2000 for GB Color, which turned out to be better
than this. The game does add a few new interesting things like
theme music, and plenty of new modes of play, but it doesn't
match up to the horrible controls and graphics for this game.
You'd be better off getting Fire Pro Wrestling for Game Boy
Advance instead.